Talks about the scope of the Government's controversial proposed privacy legislation will be held with the media, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Michael McDowell has promised.
Speaking after a Dublin conference on the issue, which heard strong criticisms of the legislation from the National Union of Journalists, newspaper editors, and lawyers, Mr McDowell attempted to strike a conciliatory note.
The proposed legislation, published in tandem with changes to defamation laws, would allow individuals to go to the courts to prevent publication of material on the grounds that it interfered with their rights to privacy.
However, Mr McDowell rejected charges that such a privacy law would "freeze investigative journalism".
"I don't think that that is true internationally, but I would say that I will sit down with anybody and the committee in the Oireachtas and anyone can throw their tuppence worth in, and we will look at this legislation to see if we are getting the balance right," he told Today FM's Sunday Supplement programme.
Asked later if Mr McDowell was signalling concessions to the media, his departmental spokeswoman said: "Not necessarily. All legislation is considered carefully and there is a process of consultation that takes place," she told The Irish Times.
Defending his proposals, the Minister said that newspapers had to be stopped from clear breaches of privacy, such as when Dublin model Laura Bermingham was photographed topless as she changed clothes backstage during a fashion show.
One newspaper sent a photographer disguised as a nurse to take pictures in a Dublin hospital of RTÉ Prime Time presenter Miriam O'Callaghan just hours after she had given birth to her latest child.
"What is wrong with either of those two people if they knew what was happening being able to go to the courts and say that these pictures were taken this morning by somebody from the Daily Bugle and I want that stopped? Can they do it now? If they can do it now, what is wrong with this Bill?" he asked.
However, he denied that the privacy Bill will create new rights to privacy that could be exploited by the wealthy, or powerful to stop journalism that is in the public interest from emerging. "It's very strange that nearly everywhere else where this is judge-made law, they always say that it was the failure of the Oireachtas to grasp the nettle and to do anything serious.
"But when it comes to themselves there is always this thing, 'Let the judges make the law, and that the Government and the Oireachtas should have nothing to do with it'," he said.
Saying that he believed fears that the privacy legislation would end investigative journalism were "exaggerated", Fine Gael deputy leader Richard Bruton said he believed that there is a case "for tightening up" the legislation.
Journalists "in trying to be fair and in seeking both sides of the story" could face privacy court actions, he acknowledged, once they went to put allegations to an individual, he said.
